Social, work lives collide on networking websites

— -- Just after her honeymoon last March, Wadooah Wali took the de rigueur next step these days: She changed her status on the networking websites Facebook and MySpace from "in a relationship" to "married" and posted pictures of her partner — another woman.

The well-wishes from friends and family poured in, stoking Wali's happiness. Then came a note that jolted her, noticeable for what it didn't say. No congratulations. Just: "Nice pictures."

It was from a professional contact Wali hardly knew — someone to whom she never would have sent something as personal as a wedding announcement, let alone pictures. Wali likes to keep her personal life separate from her professional acquaintances, wary that some might react negatively to her sexual orientation. But suddenly her social circles had collided.

Talk about awkward.

"I was worried that the repercussions of TMI — Too Much Information — was going to be a problem," says Wali, 33, director of communications for a Los Angeles-based Internet company.

The episode was a reflection of how the walls that separate parts of a person's life can be knocked down in the emerging world of online social networking. Everyone you know — high school and college classmates, business associates, someone you met in a nightclub — and even total strangers can become a "friend" on your personal Web page and gain access to all sorts of information and discussions about you.

Online networking sites — used by 86.6 million people in the USA last month, according to Nielsen Online — have long been the focus of concern about teenagers posting too much information about their lives. (This week, MySpace agreed to adopt new online rules to try to shield teen members from sexual predators.)

But as a growing number of adults are learning, giving too much information online isn't just a problem for teenagers.

On MySpace, Facebook and other social networks, a user can join another member's "friends" list simply by asking. Many people allow new friends without a second thought. Social networking sites vary in what kinds of privileges come with friendship, but for the most part, it opens virtual doors to all sorts of personal information.

A user can revoke friendships at any point, but many people have long lists of dozens of friends on their Web pages and don't monitor their list of friends that closely.

In the offline world, we know better than to put people from different parts of our lives in one big room where they might share the wrong kinds of stories about us.

But online, "all the walls come down," Wali says.

Online "friends" can "look at your pictures," she says. "They can look at your blog. They can see what's going on and you have no control over that information anymore because you've accepted them as friends."

On MySpace, all friends are treated equally — unless you change your privacy settings — so your best friend might see the same information as an acquaintance who works in your office building. Certain friends can be blocked from getting information, but only through a cumbersome process.

On Facebook, friends can be designated to have limited access to your profile.

In a few weeks, Facebook users will be able separate their "friends" into social circles and decide which kinds of information about the user they receive, says Chris Kelly, chief privacy officer.

"We don't think all friends should be equal," Kelly says. "Our goal is to accurately reflect the social infrastructure."

MySpace plans to make similar changes in a few months.

"MySpace will soon empower users to create sub-sections within their profiles based on their social circles to personify, manage and control all aspects of their lives," the company said in a statement Wednesday.

In the meantime, social network users gradually are learning to be careful about their communications on personal Web pages.

Andrew Ledbetter, an assistant professor of communications studies at Ohio University in Athens, says the issue is "especially challenging as a professor.

"On Facebook," he says, "my high school pals, college buddies and grad school friends are lumped together with former students, current students and professional colleagues, in one big social group."

Ledbetter states on his page that his political views are "conservative" and that he is a Christian.

"I've wondered about if students don't share my political affiliation or religion, would that ever be a barrier?"

He says he has wanted to post religious thoughts for members of his church, but decided against it.

"Would that be appropriate for current students to read?" he asks. "Possibly not."

Adds Wali, "You would never tack up a personal prospectus in the women's bathroom. You wouldn't buy advertising in the middle of Times Square that says, 'I am this' and 'This is what I like.' "

But that, she says, is what can happen on social network websites.

'They can write what they want'

Facebook and MySpace send headlines about your activities to those on your friends list, announcing changes you've made in your personal profile or notes that friends post on your page. Unless you turn them off, those headlines are generated automatically by your actions, such as making a new friend or joining a new group.

So, for instance, when your minister logs onto his Facebook page, his newsfeed might tell him about a gift you just received: a pixilated G-string sent by an old boyfriend, perhaps.

Or your mom might call, concerned after being informed via headline that you've just (you thought jokingly) joined an online discussion group called "Heavy Drinking."

And remember that day you called in sick? Your friend just posted pictures of you at the beach that day. Your boss got the story.

You might control the groups to which you belong and the pictures that you post. But if a "friend" posts something on your public wall on your page that you don't like, others might see it before you can remove it.

"You have no control over what other people write about you and what other people choose to say," says Larry Rosen, author of Me, MySpace, and I: Parenting the Net Generation. "They can write what they want."

Rosen says he recently sent an e-mail to a former high school classmate he grew up with in the 1960s, asking whether he remembered "how we used to get loaded before physics class."

That former classmate now happens to be a college dean.

"Could you imagine if I made that comment online and a president or dean saw this — and all of a sudden your reputation is down the tubes because of something that was innocent from 40 years ago," Rosen says.

And if a friend does something embarrassing on his own page, it might make you look bad.

"Once you make (a) connection" on a networking site, "you in a way assume responsibility for your friends' actions and behavior," says Mary Madden of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which studies online behavior.

A friend doesn't even have to say something directly about you to affect your reputation.

Deb Levine, executive director at Internet Sexuality Information Services in Oakland, spent time cultivating professional contacts on LinkedIn, a social network with features similar to Facebook and MySpace that is designed for making professional contacts.

Then the wife of Levine's rabbi asked to "friend" her on the site, and Levine felt compelled to say yes.

Now Levine has mixed her religious life with her work life online, something she never intended to do. And she worries that having a personal contact listed among business associates will make her look less professional.

"I'm using LinkedIn to further my professional projects," Levine says. "There's just no way (the rabbi's wife) could be helpful in that. I don't talk about my religion and religious affiliations" while at work.

"Once your audience becomes large enough," Madden says, "what was once a semi-private network can start to feel very public."

Not an exclusive club

Some have tried to deal with the pitfalls of social networking without limiting access to their friends lists.

Howard Rheingold, a blogger and author of books about online communities, recently sent all his Facebook friends a message reminding them that he doesn't actually know everyone on his list.

Rather than be selective about whom he accepts as friends, Rheingold and others treat Facebook more as a guestbook, open to nearly everyone who makes a request.

Once you become someone's friend, you can see a list of his or her friends — and ask those people to be your friend, too. So, for example, if you ask Rheingold to become your friend and he agrees, you can send friend requests to all of Rheingold's friends.

They might say yes only because they think you know Rheingold, or that he has referred you to them.

Rheingold warned his friends that they "will find that a large network of people who don't really know me in real life will have some access to information about you.

"If you get friend requests from people who are part of my social graph, please don't assume that they are actually my friends or that I endorse them," Rheingold wrote. "If you are not comfortable with the exposure that being a Facebook friend of mine brings to your profile, 'unfriend' me — I won't feel slighted."

Says Barak Kassar, president of Rassak Experience, an advertising and marketing agency in San Francisco: "It's a bit like we're all Hollywood people now, where everyone is our friend."

That's why Rishi Malhotra, a New York vice president at HBO and Kassar's friend, monitors his Facebook page so closely. Kassar recently posted a picture of Malhotra at a dinner and linked it to Malhotra's page. Malhotra unlinked it so it was no longer connected to his profile.

"There was nothing wrong with the picture," Malhotra says. But "it wasn't my choice. I want to have the tools to manage my identity online. If you use Facebook, it doesn't have to be a picture. Someone can write publicly on your wall," the message board on each user's page. "Someone can do anything that might affect how you want to be perceived."

As the bigger networking sites develop more tools to help members manage privacy and more people learn to use the existing tools, concerns about privacy on such sites could fade a bit, Madden says.

Another possibility, she says, is that "we simply will become more open and transparent about what we share online because the benefits outweigh the risks."

That's the approach taken by Tiffany Shlain, an independent filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards, sort of an Oscar award for websites.

She accepts just about everyone who asks to be an online friend; her current tally is about 550. Managing a network like that can be "challenging" because "it's like you've collapsed time and they're your friend now — but they're not."

But she doesn't worry that much about protecting her privacy. "People are tracking you all the time," Shlain says. "I always feel like privacy is an illusion."

Wali, for her part, says she is not a particularly public person; she's happier behind the scenes.

Inadvertently announcing her sexual orientation to a business associate online was an uncomfortable experience, she says, but the "flip side of the worry is that well, at least it's out there, and all I can do is live my life."

And, she figures, "If you're going to take the trouble and the time to seek me out as a friend in one of these online spaces, then you must want to know me as a person."